memorywrangler

Here's a photo through my microscope at 48 hours post-spawning. For comparison, I included a paramecium my paramecium culture and a ciliate from a random jar of infusoria I had sitting around. I guess I could imagine it eating paramecia in a few days. At first, I thought those "tufts" might be fungus, but the they very evenly spaced and by fiddling around in photoshop I could see that they are in side the body. I found this picture of pigment cells in a Haplochromis species. They look vaguely similar, so maybe they are the start of the stripes or something?

Both of the fish above turned out to be female, so I'm back in business! And I found another potential female a couple days ago (picture below). I set up my male in a clean 5.5 gallon for a couple days to let him get situated, then I introduced one of the females above and spawned repeatedly over the course of a couple hours. The couple spawned on some plastic plants I added and under the heater and maybe behind the filter. About half way through I added some guppy grass and they liked that as well. I think I might just use guppy grass in the future. The eggs seemed to be slightly stick and I think some of the stuck to the plants. I removed both fish, the sponge filter, and, out of an abundance of caution, added some methylene blue to keep the fungus away. That was 72 hours ago, and I just spotted about 20 impossibly small fry (on the blue background)! I'd be planning to feed them from a paramecium culture I have going, but now I'm worried even those might be too big. I understand it'll take a few days for them to finish their yolk sacks, and, in the meantime, I'm performing 50% water changes to get rid of the methylene blue, so the paramecia will survey long enough to be eaten. Hopefully, some of them will survive.

What books -- yes,actual, physical books -- about fish and aquarium keeping have you found most useful? I was at the library the other day and found a copy of "Fish and Invertebrate Culture" by Stephen Spotte and published in 1978. It has a remarkable collection of information that still seems very useful, including tips for making airlift pumps more efficient and a great discussion of the nitrogen cycle. It was much more satisfying than the often-superficial information I find online. It makes me think there must be a bunch of great (perhaps quite old) books out there. What are they?

The fish I'm trying to breed like to spawn on/near the top of the sponge filter, and I'd rather they do it elsewhere. So the wall-like nature of the batten filter is attractive. Mostly, though, I'm curious to try them out.

Your video cleared it up for me. I had misunderstood with a jet lifter was I thought it was the curved tube at the top of the lift pipe, but now I see it’s how the air gets into the tube. The size to fit 1/2 inch PVC would be great. thanks.

Do the 3D printed lifter work better than pvc angle fittings? Could you share the design files or STL for them? That sounds like a great idea! Even my 5.5 gallon tanks are bigger than I need for my current project, so i could double my tanks. Oh, you could also move the divider as the fry grow to give them space while keeping them a little confined to make feeding easier. Any tips @Fish Folk?

Two main reasons: 1. I'm curious about them. 2. Neither a sponge nor an undergravel filter suits my current project. I'm breeding scarlet badis and I've had poor luck moving the extremely tiny eggs around. My current plant is to thoroughly clean the bottom of the tank so I can see the eggs (so the undergravel filter is not an option). I'm currently using a sponge filter, and it's fine, but it makes cleaning the bottom of the tank harder. My hope with the matten filter is to hide the heater behind the filter so that the spawing/incubating/grow out area will be wide open. Finally, the fish spawn near and around objects. I'd like them to use some plastic plants I have for this purpose. They do use them, but they will also spawn near the heater or the filter which is less convenient in terms of keeping track of the eggs. So, again, having the filter be a 'wall' that hides the heater would be useful.

I'm thinking about building matten filters for some 5- and 10-gallon tanks, since I've heard they are nice and quiet It'd be great to benefit from others' experience building and use them. So here are some questions: How dense should the sponge be? Can it be dense enough to keep small fry out of the back side of the filter? Are "Jetlifters" worth it? I don't really understand what they are aside from fancy lift tubes. How do I make it as quiet as possible? How large should be the tubing be? Is it important to have a good "seal" around the edge? Any tips for achieving that? Any good (and preferably cheap) sources for sponge? (the coop sponge -- https://www.aquariumcoop.com/products/sponge-pad-coarse?_pos=2&_sid=ff32f4c7a&_ss=r -- has holes that seem to big to me and it's too small). I found this, but i'm not sure it's appropriate -- it looks very stiff: https://www.thepondguy.com/product/matala-filter-media-pads/?sku=110462&p=PPCGSHOP&gclid=Cj0KCQjw8NilBhDOARIsAHzpbLDaKOTh-uQ5yEXQi5o0Zg8pZ4c7vM9V_1q4twH2-TalXsVq9ZiYpWsaAr8AEALw_wcB Thanks.

For my scarlet badis breeding project, I want to keep the bottom of the tanks very clean so I can see the very tiny eggs the fish scatter when spawning. So far, I've just been siphoning with some rigid tubing and and moving around the bottom. It works ok, but it's tedious. More generally, my bare tanks end up covered with poop and brown algae. In the videos with Dean, the bottom of his tanks always look really clean and I can only imagine he (and someone here) has a more efficient technique. What's the best way to clean bare-bottom tanks?

Well, I found these two at my LFS yesterday. We'll see what happens as they grow out a bit. I reasonably confident about the lighter one being female. Not sure about the darker one with the black spot. Anyone want to hazard a guess just for fun?

I'm so sad! My female got caught in the output of the breeder box I had her in and died. I feel terrible. She was such a pretty thing. RIP 😞

What should I do first to this trio of Molly’s? They are currently in quarantine. They seem reasonably active, but the two females and maybe the male have sunken bellies. They are eating pretty well. I was planning to do the med trio, but I was wondering if I should treat the belly problem first. Maybe with deworming? Any suggestions are welcome.

I got another batch of worms and left the leaches and some of the worms in the 0.5% salt solution for 24 hours. Neither the black worms nor the leaches died this time. I give up... I guess I'll keep picking leaches. On the other hand, my black worm colony is doing well, so maybe the salt is helping to reduce crashes (of course, now I'm sure it'll crash this evening...).

Are suggestions on how long to let the female recover before trying again? She has visible eggs, but I don’t want to stress her out too much.

Well, I put the back together again after a week of feasting on live food. A few things happened: They spawned a few times that produced about 20 eggs in toto They spawned a few times that that produced no eggs The female seems to lose interest before she was empty of eggs. I took out the female, moved the male to a breeding box, and collected the eggs in a glass dish in the bottom of the tank. During the night the suction cup on the breeding box failed, the male got lose and ate all the eggs!!!! I also checked the eggs under my microscope and almost of all of them looked wrinkled or deflated and one was torn open. Not sure what that means. I guess I’ll again next week, this time I’m moving the eggs to their own tank.

One of the new coop lights:https://www.aquariumcoop.com/collections/lights/products/aquarium-co-op-easy-plant-led?variant=40242914459717

What's the best method to figure out the lighting level/photo period for my new, deep, planted tank? I've just set up this 30g high. It's 24x24x12. It's low tech (ferts but not CO2). It has one of the new coop lights. The substrate has some flourite black in pouches, but mostly it's aquarium gravel capped with black diamond sand. Lots of root tabs. It's planted with Corkscrew and jungle val Dwarf saggitaria java ferns pearl weed hornwort Anubias nana petite One Crypt A narwhal and a Disney queen. The last tank I set up promptly became an algae farm, because the light was too high. It's taken a long time to get back under control. I would very much like to avoid that happening again. So, my questions are: What's the best method to figure out the lighting level/photo period? Should I start low and turn it up if no algae appears? Start high and turn it down until algae stops growing? Any guess about what a good starting point for 'high' and 'low' would be for a tank this deep? Thanks.

One is aquarium decor. They other is a cake topper so its food safe.

Here’s the tank mostly together. It’s jungle val, dwarf sagittaria, one big crypt, some trident Java fern, pearl weed, and a bunch of Anubias nana petite I had in a piece of drift wood. i ended up rescaping/cannibalizing a couple other tanks, so all had to buy was the jungle Val. It’s a good thing. I had my seven year old daughter to help me out with. Weirdly none of you mentioned that I clearly needed queen Elsa from frozen in there and the sprinkling of neon rainbow gravel.

Not really. I’ve been watching fry and reconditioning mom and dad. I think my going to try spawning them again next week in a very empty tank to see if I can recover more eggs.

I asked this question a few places and some Valisinsria sounds like a good plan. Any reason to pick one species over another? Lots of people have said jungle Val(Vallisneria americana). My lfs has Val gigantea and Val spiralis, and I’ve read about Val nana. Which do I choose?

Well, I went to the store to get a 20h and came home with a 30-tall. It’s a perfect fit for the space and it wasn’t that much more expensive, but it’s really tall and shallow (front to back): 24w x 24h x 12d. I’m on a budget (which the coop light helped blow) and planning a live bearer tank: platies, mollys, maybe some swordtails, and probably some plecos or something to help with cleanup. My main question is plants: what can I get that’s compact and grows tall? And will look decent? And hide lots of fry?

I have had my eye out for a female scarlet badis for a while. So much so, that I was know as "the guy who comes in looking for scarlet badis" at my LFS. A few weeks ago, I brought home a promising candidate and after a few days of feasting on moina, eggs were apparent! I picked up a companion for her and started quarantine. They seemed healthy and happy, but not "in the mood." I moved the female out for a few days. When I added her back it took about an hour for spawning start! Hooray. They spawned probably 10 times over the course of an hour before the female went to hide in a corner, her egg supply visibly depleted: I moved both parents out of the the tank. As the eggs started coming, I realized a I had a few mistakes and miscalculations: I had put some plants in a small, removable container in the tank hoping they spawn there. They did, but only some of the time. They also spawned next to heater, behind a small pump in the tank and just here and there. They eggs are incredibly small and almost neutrally buoyant, so when I tried to remove the container I think lost most of them. I can barely the find the eggs in a glass petri dish when I know they are there. Finding them on in the sand substrate in the tank is a non-starter. The eggs are quite fragile. I checked some under my microscope and the most amount of egg moving I did seemed to have damaged some of them. I managed to move about 5 of them in a mini egg tumbler I have, but I can barely see them. I've read it'll take about a week before they hatch and get through their yolk sacks, so I guess I'm just going to wait and watch. The good news is that there's lots of life in the tank, so their should be food for the very tiny fry. The potential bad news is that there's scuds in there too. I'm concerned they may eat the fry. In any case, in couple weeks I'll even have fry or I suspect the female may a new batch of eggs and I can again. I'd love to hear how other people have managed collecting/incubating/hatching tiny eggs that get spread all over the place. Thanks.

Can you tell more about your colony? How bit is the tank? How many fish? thanks!

I got another batch of black worms and did some more experiments with salt. I tried leaving some worms in the 0.6% salt solution overnight, rather than just for 20 minutes. Results: They all died I picked out the the leaches in this batch and treated them with 0.6% salt. They seemed to die in a few minutes! So, that suggests I could dispense with picking out the leaches and just treat with salt. My only hesitation is that a bunch of the leaches were dead when I picked them out, so maybe the leaches were already sickly to start with. I'll try it again with my next batch of worms and leaches.